


Breaking Patterns

by mariusgaaazzh



Series: Our Best Misgivings [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Alcohol, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Tendencies, Kakashi cooks, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, otherwise disasterous domesticity, twenty-something shitheads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-03-04 14:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13366197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariusgaaazzh/pseuds/mariusgaaazzh
Summary: Kakashi left the ANBU, and Tenzo couldn't follow.(Two traumatized people's awkward attempts at dating. They have no idea what they're doing, but it all ends well, I swear.)





	1. Chapter 1

Kakashi was leaving.

The ANBU locker room fell quiet in shaken disbelief, when their Captain related the Hokage’s orders.

Yugao’s eyes darted between her teammates. Yoji and Ko looked like they were about to say something, but lacked the nerve to. Hanae stood taken aback, eagle mask forgotten in her hands. Hound was a model operative and a trusted Captain. Not when Team Ro was at last fully off the bench.

But it was coming, Tenzo had thought. In fact, it was overdue. Especially since the Uchiha massacre, when they lost Itachi do whatever drew him into the darkness.

There was something always off in Kakashi, which had put him slightly at odds with the whatever they were doing in the ANBU, with their particular brand of peacekeeping. It was the same thing that launched him forward, crashing into the enemy on the battlefield, and made him pause is stark defiance when they were briefed on another infiltration mission.

Kakashi called it looking out for your comrades, Tenzo thought of it as a sort of wild abandon. The Captain was running from a darkness of his own, which was catching up on him step by step. The ANBU was a part of that.

The goodbyes were quiet, and awkward, and heartfelt.

A few stilled, uncertain laughs broke the silence, a few jokes fell flat. There were  pats on the shoulder, and some generic wishes of good luck, and then the squad bowed to their Captain in gratitude and respect.  They didn’t have the words to say more, as they watched Kakashi walk out, to turn in his uniform and forget his way into the ANBU compound. There was no formal ceremony of dismissal, as the purpose they served did not have a name, or a face.

 +

In the evening, lithe shadows raced over Konoha’s rooftops, perching upon tree branches and knocking on windows.

Tenzo was expecting his knock to come, and followed Hanae immediately, sliding on the electricity wires and cutting the familiar corners.

Team Ro was known for its exceptional communication and order during the missions - the Captain would take nothing less - and that had bled through into their routines home in Konoha. To know where to meet up with your team was just as natural as to tell the wind, and, along with their cutthroat poker games, it was a point of pride. Certain things they just knew.

“The usual,” his companion threw over her shoulder, as they made their way to the part of the village bordering the abandoned Uchiha compound, where the rest of the team was waiting under cheap neon lights.

Ko showed up with a beer already in hand, and Yugao was giving him a side eye, mostly for not grabbing one for her. Yoji was finishing his cigarette as he watched them bicker, and welcomed his other team members with a wave and a smile.

Kakashi was, of course, miserably late, and his half-hearted excuse was drowned in collective jeers, and he himself was nearly hauled over Ko’s shoulder. Hatake was dragged into the bar, and lamented  like a heroine from one of his inextinguishable paperbacks, when he hit the back of his head on a low doorway. Tenzo smiled with vengeance.

+

They all drank themselves stupid, with loud toasts, and laughter, and war stories, which lost their rotten flavor of death after a few shots of liquor. This was Kakashi’s goodbye, the best they could give him: another fold of the routine, which he was still a part of. In one moment, when Hanae made a show of trying to tell the color of their underwear with her Byakugan and Ko kept interrupting with a retelling of that one mission where they had to go commando in more that one sense, Tenzo felt like nothing might change.

Everyone groaned and announced that they were still way too sober for those flashbacks. The fuzzy fabric of the conversation began to thin, with Ko eyeing the cue sticks and Hanae and Yoji lowering their voices as they turned to it each other.

Kakashi leaned against his shoulder, and the single eye first sadly gazed at the empty whisky glass, and then at him.

More out of habit that out of principle, Tenzo tried to fight it.

He sighed. Alcohol ran warm under his skin. And before his senpai could even say anything, he grabbed the weary vessel, and started an uneven path towards the bar, for another round.

“Dirty, Hatake.” Yugao laughed. “One for me too, Tenzo, be a dear.”

Tenzo raised his hand in a mock salute, which she mirrored. And he smiled. 

The ANBU were their own little world: with impossible schedules, faces hidden under porcelain masks, and death always standing behind one’s shoulder. One did not enter it easily, and could not keep a foot inside it when they left. Tenzo felt it even more sharply than the coolness of the glass under his hand, because he treasured it. And now he was afraid that it was all slipping away, even as he could hear Yugao and Hatake fighting over splitting the ketchup for their fries.

Kakashi was leaving, and he couldn’t follow.

Tenzo loved his work, and believed that he was a good fit. Whatever darkness clung to the ANBU like a second skin didn’t seem to touch him, and he was grateful for that, and for what the Black Ops gave him. He lacked what most of Konoha’s nin had - a team, a cohort. People you learn how to fight with, and the people that you fight for. So a white mask and a borrowed name felt just right: they weighted him equal against his teammates and gave him a place inside the Leaf, but also confined them all do the shadows.

As he was happy to put on the uniform, he was just as relieved that his Senpai did not have to anymore, and that he had friends that could drag him out of the ANBU as Kakashi himself had dragged him out of Root.

And yet he couldn’t exorcise the twisted, sticky feeling knotting in his stomach. It was a thought, persistent, buzzing, no matter how many times he tried chasing it away, that there were celebrating Hatake’s dismissal in the same way they would be mourning his death.

Someone shouldered him, and Tenzo landed with two palms open against the oak counter. The bartender’s eyes were on him, and he tried to play it cool.

There was a range of what the ANBU could be, to themselves and to one another, in a small world hidden behind masks and call signs. And departure of a comrade was a singular event, whether it was to a comfortable position of jonin-sensei or the great white skies.

An inadequacy of emotion swept through him, and Tenzo did not know what it meant. He asked for a shot.

Later, he hoped against hope that they did not spill classified information when trying to convince the bartender to get her better whisky from under the counter, and that they will not be dragged in front of Danzo-sama and the Hokage with treason charges.

“You don’t understand,” Tenzo remembered himself saying, as he was nearly bent in half over the counter and pointing back at where his team sat, and the lady - former Black Ops herself - was skillfully warding him off with a broom. “My friend.. He made it. He made it _out_.”

“You better take _him_ out”, the bartender retorted, nodding at Kakashi, who was merrilly demonstrating the art of eating fries without removing his mask to the neighboring table, “Before the Sharingan throws up all over my floor.”

Tenzo sighed, leaned in, looked her in the eye, and, _politely_ , asked for another round.

And landed a broomstick straight in the nose, which was _utterly_ _uncalled for._

“Alright.” The bartender seemed softened by his whine of indignation, and handed him a half-empty bottle, where the ember liquid splashed in an enticing circle.

“But I’m closing your tab. It is after three anyways.” She tapped her weapon against the counter impatiently, as Tenzo layed out a heap of wrinkled bills from his jacket’s pockets, trying to make sure that no part of his face was broken at the same time.

Laughs and jeers followed him through the room, but Tenzo came back to the table like a victor, pressing the bottle to his nose, was cheered to take a first round from it. _Aw, I almost feel bad for making you pay again_ , he remembered Yugao saying. Words and colors after that were a blur.

 +

There was no definite goodbye, when they all trickled out into the chill of the early morning, as there wasn't a true beginning to all of this.

Cigarettes were passed. And they stood, exchanging meaningless phrases and waiting out for the liquor haze to lift just a bit,  so that everyone would be able to make it home.

As the rippling, uncertain light grew clearer, one by one, they fell into the shadows, Yoji’s last blunt was extinguished against the wall, and hands were raised in final best wishes.

Team Ro was a set of rules, codes and traditions that kept them all together and it would continue, as it had before all of them and after they all will be gone. Saying more would be going against what they had been.

“I’ll be seeing you around,” Kakashi spoke, scratching the back of his head and sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.

Tenzo could only make himself nod. There were the only two of them left standing in the murky, grey morning, and he could make out the ketchup stains on Kakashi’s sleeve and the ever-present mask just a bit skewed.

He suddenly felt more sober that he was, and a little braver, and wanted to say something in return, something different. But he paused, as if he was staring at a ghost in the webbing light.

Kakashi was leaving, and there was no response ready in the toolbox of his world, with its white masks, borrowed names, drill sessions and late night outings. And that in itself scared him, made him recoil. The inconsistency of it, the mold that held things between them together not being there any more, pulled on something in his chest.

“Hey, Tenzo, are you -”.

And he ran, recognizing that pull as a danger he did not know, and therefore could not face. His body followed the drilled-in path between the alleys and the rooftops, mind was numb with alcohol and scraps of thoughts clasping upon each without order.

He did not remember how he got home.

+

Tenzo woke up in the afternoon, with an iron head and a mouth full of cotton. The sun treacherously got in over the top of the curtains, and was sending golden stripes all over his ceiling. It felt like sand in his eyes.

His thoughts stunk of liquor, and memories of last night came in bright jolts, between which lay the gaps of uncertainty.

Tenzo pressed the bottoms of his palms against his shut eyes until he started seeing circles, and tried to concentrate. He definitely spent all of his cash on whisky, and everyone will be forgetting to pay him back for the next month, and it was the first time he saw Hanae wear lipstick, and the world was definitively in order.

However, a sinking feeling caught him in his claws and would not let go, even as he reached out and made sure his faceplate and his weapons were in place, by his side, even as the calendar on his wall gave him the right year and date.

Something shifted between him and the world, which echoed in a sullen ache, and in anticipation. Everything seemed smaller and yet infinitely more significant at the same time. He tried to move, and it felt like his head had been split open.

Shower. Tenzo rubbed his face again. He was not ready to explain what happened even to himself, and he had a mission brief in the evening.

Kakashi had left.

He rolled out of his narrow bed with a groan.


	2. Chapter 2

The first days without were nothing out of the ordinary, folding upon one another like sheets of paper.

Team Ro kept on with the same mechanical precision instilled in them, unconsciously moving in to cover the ebbing holes and silences Hatake’s departure left in the conversations and spaces of their lives. If he tried, Tenzo could almost leave his senpai’s absence from the squad unnoticed. First, he could just think that Kakashi was out on one of the longer missions, and then he was sent on a mission of his own.

When he returned from Suna, skin weathered and sand in every part of his travel clothes, Tenzo caught himself waiting for something.  But the locker next to his in the ANBU changing room stood empty. The Captains and the Hokage were screening the new recruits.

He tapped his fingers over its familiar metallic surface as he was heading out, gear bag thrown over his shoulder. And stopped in his tracks.

Kakashi was gone.

Tenzo did not remember himself in the ANBU without being Hound’s second, because he never were. It was an oddly vulnerable sensation, not to rely on the speed and destruction of the Chidori on the battlefield, and the quick tactical mind away from it. All as if he himself was missing a limb or an eye. There was a prickly, sucking feeling, a hole in his days which eventually took the shape of messy silver hair, narrow shoulders, defensive sarcasm, and a stubborn stare.

But the Team was fine, and Tenzo was fine also.  

He was, predictibally, appointed the acting Captain, until all the formalities were settled and final judgements weighed. But the position was effectively his. He brought Hanae up to speed, resisting the temptation of making her do the paperwork which Hatake would push on him, and together they easily held their now smaller squad in shape. Tenzo’s roots grew deep, and there was hardly a loss which could wither them.

Kakashi seemed fine too.

+

They ran into each other a few times around the Hokage’s office, and exchanged general comments about the clouds and the state of the borders. Hatake seemed bored, carrying his papers and turning in his B-ranks. But the slouch of his back was more relaxed now, and the left eye - comfortably covered by the hitai-ate.

Tenzo took it as a good sign.

He entertained the thought of asking the man out for ramen, but tripped over it, as one would over a doorway into an unfamiliar home. He wasn't sure what was the ground between them now.

They were friends. Kakashi said so himself, back when Tenzo held him pressed to the floor of Orochimaru’s lab, ready to drive the kunai into his eye socket and extract the precious Sharingan.

Kakashi, who broke him out free and taught him about the world the best he could.

Friends, and everything else that followed from surviving by each other’s side, again and again.

But the patterns, along which they have worked and lived for years, the ones which molded them, and broke them, and dragged them through hell and back, and made them into what they were, were now gone.

Tenzo did not know.

He thought of Kakashi. He thought about him a lot. But he felt like a stranger in his own head, stumbling around and trying different doors, some of which lead into nothing, while others were closed.

He asked himself, for the first time, if he was also a part of his senpai’s darkness. If he were also that _thing_ which gorged the life out of Kakashi’s eyes, and erupted in him with recklessness and rage, that which Tenzo would have given his hand to protect him from.

Kakashi left the ANBU. And he was ANBU, after all.

The thought chilled him, robbed him of sleep, and sent him wandering the Konoha streets, hands hidden in pockets, away from the night’s cool air. He had to stop, he reasoned. He should back out, and let Kakashi live his life. But the pull in his chest from before, the shift in the world he couldn’t name, would not let him rest. Or do the right thing. Tenzo sensed that he was making circles around something very important, which he could not see.

+

A kind of sweet, lightheaded panic surged through him next time he ran into Hatake, who was walking down from the fish markets with a brown paper package tucked under his arm. Kakashi was seemingly oblivious to everything but the battered green paperback he held in front of his nose. And yet, when he felt Tenzo’s gaze, he lifted his head to meet it from across the street, and the single eye narrowed.

They spoke. Of what, Tenzo could not even remember, preoccupied with the fact so much he could not follow his own words.

Until Hatake was about to go. The package was a fresh catch, and couldn’t wait.

Tenzo nodded. He understood.

His hand rested briefly on Kakashi’s forearm, and, in a moment of blind courage, Tenzo searched his face. For something. For some _ground_ between them.

“I’ll be seeing you around.”

And Kakashi looked away from him.

“Yeah.”

 +

Everything between them seemed alien, had shifted. But Tenzo didn’t realize how much, until he ended up in the hospital.

At first,  he didn’t even feel the cut, when the missing-nin’s chakra threads, hair thin, nearly invisible, brushed his shoulder, getting into the gaps between the plates of the ANBU armor.

Then, his head went light, and his step faltered in the shadow run. He was on his knees, struggling for air, as Team Ro was fighting off the ambush in the treetops above him.

Then he was being dragged, through water and mud. And Ko was cursing through his teeth, as he tried to isolate the poison from his bloodstream to the best of his ability. Tenzo was coughing up bile and wondering whether that meant kidney failure or not, as he swam in and out of consciousness in the green light of the healing chakra. He felt his roots dig into the forest floor.

There were muffled shouts, and Yugao’s grasp.

And then, gradually, he was washed out by the darkness towards the white of the hospital walls, the sterile smell of worn out bedsheets, steady beeping of the monitors, and soft, deafening hold of the pharmaceuticals.

Konoha. They made it home.

Alive, definitely, but everything ached as if he were dragged on the ground for half a ri. Which he probably was.

Tenzo groaned, and risked turning his head.

And.

He squinted.

Kakashi-senpai. On a chair by his bedside, skinning an apple with a pocket knife. Out of focus, but definitely himself.

“Yo.”

Tenzo blinked at him sleepily.

At first, he thought that the mixture of drugs in his head had set the world afloat, because he was very clearly hallucinating, and the sudden jolt of adrenaline in him could only be chemically induced.

He stared at the apparition before him, and it stared back, cocking its head in question.

“Tenzo. Should I call the nurse or something?”

“No, you.. You hate nurses.” He managed, coarsely, trying to get his voice back to him.

Kakashi looked at him with greater attention.

And then Tenzo realized what he said, and tried to raise his hand in greeting, only to be made aware of an IV sticking out of his arm.

“Hi.”

Hatake leaned in. The single eye was directly on Tenzo, inspecting his face.

“You look terrible.”

 _Yeah, no shit_. Tenzo was about to respond, but found himself dumbfounded by the materiality of his visitor.

Kakashi was here.

And Tenzo, with his heavy head and thore chest, felt distinctly out of place. As if the coined flipped between them fell on the wrong side.

It was not hard to imagine what Hatake would be seeing, as Tenzo had found himself in his position numerous times.

Naturally low chakra reserves and a tendency to forget that he was a functioning person during the missions landed Kakashi in the hospital pretty much after every major outing of Team Ro. Tenzo had also inevitably ended up by his bedside, first dragged in by worry, then as a glorified babysitter and a mediator between the Sharingan and the hospital staff.

And now, Kakashi was sitting over him, in his jonin jacket, cutting the goddamn apple.

The pattern, a rhythm that established their lives fell dissonant, and it sent his head spinning.

“Seriously. Look at the bags under your eyes.” Kakashi swung his knife dangerously close to his face. “Get back to sleep.”

“The Team?” Tenzo ignored him. He was now fully awake, and, despite the exhaustion and sickness, the encounter with Kire’s missing-nin came back to him with uncomfortable clarity.

“.. Is fine.” Kakashi assured him, stretching. “You would’ve still been poked with antidotes when they came in after the debrief. But I think they were the ones who left you that.”

He nodded at a crate full with apples on the bedside table. It had a squibbled drawing of a tabby Cat pinned to it with a shuriken.

Tenzo smiled. At least someone kept their sense of humor after the Team had their minds picked apart by the Intelligence. So things weren’t as bad.

“But, senpai.” He awkwardly pulled himself up on the pillows. “What are you doing here?”

Hatake did not grace him with an answer, until he had finished parting his apple into neat pieces. Then he sighed, and put the knife aside, voice down to a dramatic whisper. “I came to break you out.”

Tenzo was well aware that lying prone in a hospital bed greatly reduced his ability to look exasperated, but he still did the best he could.

“No.”

“But.. Tenzo..”  Kakashi looked positively dejected, like a child who just learned that all the birthdays in the world were cancelled.

Despite himself, Tenzo was impressed. If, through their long years together, he weren’t familiar with the full range of Hatake’s pouts like with the back of his hand, he would have actually believed he refused his senpai's masterplan.

“No.” He attempted an accusatory gesture, only to be reminded of an IV still being there, and glared at it with vengeance.

Kakashi lifted an eyebrow, as if his point was made for him.

But Tenzo let not that deter him.

“That's what _you_ do. All the normal people get treatment, and get signed out of the hospital on time. With papers and further recommendations. Through the _door_ . And do not go around popping painkillers they got from gods know where and hiding in the bushes whenever they see someone from the medical heading their way. No, senpai, that is _your_ life. Do not try dragging me into it.”

He stopped, flushed red with righteous indignation at Kakashi’s nonsense.

And Hatake was laughing.

It wasn't a bitter grin or a hollow mockery, there to deceive and lead from a true purpose, but a rolling, joyous thing. It rose somewhere from Kakashi’s chest, and bubbled up to the surface, sending his entire body shaking, as he leaned back, allowing it to pour out of him, undeterred. And nothing dark hid within it.

And Tenzo felt some of that joy wrap into a knot within him too. He could read the heavy toll of the ANBU work etching itself deeper into Kakashi’s face, turning into a different kind of mask under the painted porcelain. It had been too long since he had seen Kakashi like this. Happy, he realized.

He nearly forgot how animated that face could be, even hidden behind the thick fabric. Eye folded into a happy crescent, radiant wrinkles nesting in its corners, jaw and neck line beautiful and defined.

He was staring openly now, feeling his cheeks grow hot for a different reason. And didn’t care.

“Hey.” Kakashi gave him a teasing look, and forced a last chuckle. “Still a no?”  

“Yes.” Tenzo rolled his eyes, fighting a laugh of his own. And then, by the glimmer in Kakashi’s eye, realized he left an opening, and hurried shut it, not to be dragged into a half an hour of cat-and-mouse semantics. “Yes, as in no. You _cannot_ break me out of the hospital, Hatake-senpai.”

“But come on.” Kakashi was openly whining now, as he would when he didn’t want to fill out the squad inventory on his own. “Tenzo. It would be so dashing. I could carry you out. And you can be my damsel.”

“No.”  

He fidgeted and extracted a pillow from under himself, making a weak yet resolute attempt to throw it into Hatake’s face. It was the principle that mattered.

Kakashi caught it in midair, and showed no intention of handing back. And Tenzo wasn’t going to ask.

“What are you actually here for?”

Kakashi shrugged, hugging the stolen pillow like a stuffed animal. “I was bored.”

“I can see that.” Tenzo gave him a disapproving glance and pulled up the sheets, trying to get comfortable without the softness under his back. “But don’t you have kids?”

“What kids?” Kakashi stared at him in confused horror.

“Well.. Shouldn't you be teaching someone? A genin team?”

“Oh.” He scratched the back of his head, shoulders dropping just an angle. “No kids. I just failed them all yesterday. They’re going back to the Academy. No kids for another year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It's fine.” Kakashi’s appeared disinterested again, which was anything but fine. The one-eyed gaze slipped somewhere above Tenzo’s head. “They weren't ready. And I just… I have to do this one right, Tenzo. I do.”

They stayed silent for a bit, and Tenzo watched Kakashi’s hands as they fiddled with the apple slices, placing them in a neat stack and pushing the plate towards him.

“Here.”

“Thank you.”

“You should not have gotten hurt, if you used the Flying Mountain formation.”

Tenzo blinked, unprepared for the change in the conversation. “You..”

“If you put the sensor in the back rather than in the front of the team, you sacrifice precision for range...

“You can't know that. And you can’t-”

“Eagle is less effective in Fern Needle Burning. You were dashing forward, and she missed the obvious-”

“Kakashi!” The mission logs had an S-rank clearance requirement, and Tenzo did not want to think of how he got his hands or them. Or why.  
  
“Tenzo, it’s not my fault you people can’t even make an effort to be discreet about your operations”. Kakashi shrugged, looking at him with a sort of bored naivete, as if explaining an elementary technique to a child.

And it set Tenzo’s blood alight with anger.

“You can’t tell me how to run my Team.”

“You made a mistake.”

“You weren’t _there_.”

The last words came like a slap, and hung in thrilling silence between them. Tenzo felt that he had crossed the line, but he couldn’t stop. He could even ignore the burning moisture building up in his lungs.

“You _left_ , Kakashi.”

“You know why I left.”

Tenzo did.

He knew what Kakashi hid under gloves and long sleeves: left hand scraped until it was bleeding and raw, and thin white lines of scars which lined the inside of his forearm. And he knew that if he will look away now, Kakashi would flee. And whatever was between them would be thrown so far back that he wasn’t sure he will ever be able to piece in back together.

A spasm curled through his chest, and he lost his breath in a fit of cough, the taste of ugly medical residue filling up his mouth. A hand, narrow yet strong, rested on his shoulder, and held him in place, until the episode ended. A pillow returned behind his head.

“I-” Kakashi’s voice came from somewhere right next to him, uncertain. “I just wanted to see how you were.”

Tenzo wiped his mouth with the back side of his hand, and looked up.

“Just get ramen with me.”

Kakashi blinked. “What?”

 _Gods_. Tenzo took full breath into his still aching lungs, and repeated himself, loud and clear.

“Would you like. To get ramen with me. Some time?”

“Of course I will.”  Hatake was for once too taken aback to act unfazed.

Tenzo nodded, and was grateful that the hand on his shoulder was still there, making slow, reassuring circles.

“And I am.. sorry that-”

“No, you’re right.” Kakashi interrupted him. “I am not ANBU anymore.”

“No..” Tenzo breathed out a laugh which surprised them both. “No, senpai, thank the gods you are not.”

“I-” Kakashi started, but suddenly fell entirely silent, leaning further into the shadows and the shape of the bed.

Tenzo’s chakra was splashing at minimum, but a few seconds later he heard it too. Footsteps down the hall.

 _Danger?_ He gestured in ANBU code.

“No.” Kakashi whispered into his ear. “The nurse is making rounds. You weren’t exactly supposed to have visitors, after the Team left. Quarantine and all.”

“Kakashi.” Tenzo hissed. “Were you spying?”

“Shhh.”

The nurse was passing by the door, and they both froze against each other. Tenzo was habitually tracking the footsteps, and counting their slowed breaths. _How exactly did his life come down to this?_

After the door on the other end of the corridor closed, Kakashi moved once again, ruffling his heap of white hair in disconcert.

“That was Kikue-san. Stopped at genin, but gives Inuzaka a run for their money. I shouldn’t stay.”

“Ramen.” Tenzo reminded, watching Hatake pocket as many apples as he could fit into his vest.

“Ramen.” Kakashi promised, hopping up on the open windowsill, and rolled his eyes at Tenzo disapproving gaze. “Oh, come on. You know no one cool uses doors.”

He sighed.

“Get some sleep.” Kakashi asked, before disappearing in a ripple of air.

But Tenzo couldn’t for the longest time, staring into the ceiling and smiling to himself like a fool.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woot-woot for all the self-indulgent dialogue.


	3. Chapter 3

Tenzo didn't know what he was expecting.

But a few days after he was discharged from the hospital, a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Yo.” Kakashi looked him over from head to toe with a quick, professional gaze. “Still not clear for duty?”

“You can’t ask that.” Tenzo gave his senpai a reproachful look, which he knew would bear absolutely no effect. But he still had to. “You can’t technically know that I’m in ANBU.”

“Oh.” Kakashi waved his hand in dismissal. “I do have the clearance for that. Just wanted to see if you were free.”

“Free for what?”

“Tenzo.” It was Kakashi’s turn to look reproachful. An expression which, unfortunately, never failed to hit the mark. “Ramen. Come.”

And he turned, heading towards Ichiraku’s, in full confidence that he would be followed.

Because, as always, Tenzo did.

This was easy. This was what they were used to, and knew how to do, with the familiar orders falling in, Kakashi lazily flirting with the counter girl for more noodles, and Tenzo picking up the bill. They have done this dozens of times before, and now Konoha’s eye shielded them from what they were.

But Tenzo felt like a stranger under Kakashi’s eye, alien to the layers of his jounin uniform, foreign to the sound of his own voice. And this was not what he wanted.

And like hell was he going to let Hatake go, to slip back into the routine of polite nods and barely overlapping schedules.

“Do you want to try again?” He asked, hands stuffed in his pockets, when they made it down the street from the ramen place, slightly drowsy from the empty bowls they left behind, and reluctant to part.

“Try what?” A single eye was staring at him from a hitai-ate pushed low.

“This.. eh…” Tenzo felt his face grew hot, and bit his lip to at least cease the mumbling. He had to himself that he wasn't thinking this far. “Whole get food together thing.”

“What, was the ramen bad?” Hatake cocked his head, looking genuinely puzzled.

“No, it’s just..” Tenzo’s hand curled into a fist in his pocket, as he met his senpai head on. “I wanted to get food with _you_.”

“Oh.”

It was a good moment, during which Tenzo was desperately planning potential routes of escape, until Kakashi’s single eye widened in understanding,

“Alright.” He nodded, with unexpected seriousness. “Tuesday. Seven. My place.”

+

Tuesday. Seven.

There was a bounce to his step when Tenzo walked out of the ANBU quarters at six forty-three. Yugao would not stop pestering him on why he asked for a replacement on the patrol roasters, and he could swear that Yoji and she exchanged a low-five as he was leaving the room.

 _Suckers_ , he thought.

+

Tenzo had been to Kakashi’s apartment a number of times - either making sure that Hatake made it to bed at night, or dragging him out of it in the morning. Or pulling out a spare futon out of the closet and crashing on the floor after the mission, when everything ached and getting home would be too much work.

The place was ill decorated, with old photos framed on the walls, furniture marked by claws, and plumbing that needed to be checked. The inevitable rows of Makeout Paradise were neatly shelved next to the tamer covers of ninjutsu theory and clan bloodlines. Two dead plants sat on the coffee table, for as long as Tenzo could remember. No amount of gently poured chakra could bring the poor withered husks back to life.

It smelled of dog and the most generic kind of cleaning detergent. But Tenzo didn't not mind. Instead, he liked it. The place made sense to him, like falling into another’s footsteps during the mission, like following a familiar voice.

Bisuke got the door for him, and paddled back inside, barely dignifying Tenzo’s nod with a waddle of a tail and a sly look from below. He had dog things things to do.

“Hello.” Tenzo called, pulling off his sandals. And was greeted with nothing, but the rich smells of soy, miso, and sesame . He followed the crackling sounds of the oil.

Indeed, Kakashi was to be found in the kitchen.

“Fish.” He said, not turning around as he carefully dropped the fillet on the sizzling skillet,  “Fifteen minutes.”

+

As it turned out, they were both terrible at breaking patterns.

The dinner was delicious, with the sweetness of the sauce and the butter silkiness of meat. But Hatake was just as bad at receiving praise as Tenzo was in articulating it. So he ended up telling Kakashi what was happening in the ANBU, staying decisively vague - and yet knowing that his senpai would be able to figure out the details.

And Hatake supplemented him with a running commentary on the life of the village, as they were doing the dishes standing side by side. Kakashi refused to let the guest do all of the work. Tenzo refused to be inconsiderate.

The Shimura and the Akimichi, and who said what to whom outside of the dumpling store blended into one with the sound of running water and Hatake’s seemingly bored tone, and Tenzo found himself so lulled into the routine and the feeling of other’s warm shoulder bumping into his, that he nearly hummed in accord, when the devious question came.

And then looked up in indignation.

“What?” Kakashi managed to appear properly scandalized, confronted with Tenzo’s menacingly pointed the chopsticks. “It's not like you’re not here anyways. And the mission desk is now complaining about my handwriting.”

“That is a no, senpai.” Tenzo had to be firm. He was not helping out Kakashi with the mission reports, even as he had before in the ANBU. It was his weakness, and his and allowing one of Konoha’s best nin to slack when it came to record-keeping was forever on his consciousness.

For that he received a splash of water from under the faucet into his face. And Kakashi smiled, a single eye folding into a radiant crescent, and handed him the dish towel, which Tenzo accepted, mimicking Hatake’s signature sigh of fake-suffering.

This was more comfortable, more calm. A sense of common duty no longer held them together, but also no more locked him in.  

The dinners now became a habit in their own right, a practice between them, where Tenzo would come in with bags of groceries, and settling down with a beer from the fridge to see Hatake work, ninken lurking between their feet.

Tenzo himself felt like a cat, feel free to come and go whenever he liked, and yet inevitably coming back.

Kakashi cooked with the same sort of mechanical precision with which he trained, his whole centered on the action, from the angle of the elbow down to the curve of the spine, relaxed posture a sign of economy of movement rather than of negligence.

Tenzo was usually admitted nowhere near Hatake’s marinades and reduced to grinding daikon and chopping scallions - even though he was critiqued for their shape and size - and taking out the trash. He genuinely didn't mind. It was nice to be of help, do something simple for someone else, which wasn’t required or ordered.

And he loved to watch how the chef’s knife sat in Kakashi’s long fingers: heavier than a kunai, much lighter than a tanto, shifting between the smallest tasks and confident, cutting motions, as if going through some secret kata.

Hatake would carefully place the markets’ catch of the day before him, cleaning off scales in certain, sweeping motions, gently washing out the guts under running water, and, before Tenzo knew, carefully separating the spine bones and rubbing salts into the tender meat of the fillet.

Tenzo wondered if there was a special sharingan technique to all of that, like the ones that the Uchiha chefs were rumored to keep a secret among them.

The fish’s severed head stared at him with one milky eye, so he settled on a safer question. “Where did you learn all of this?”

There was no answer, just the careful clacking of the knife and a turned back.

Ah, Tenzo thought, it was one of those things, that were met with a wall of silence.

He did not mind. He had his own silences, and there was still enough space left between them to comfortably sit here, in the kitchen’s yellow light. Silence was also a kind of familiarity, something they could always fall back to, if things got too nebulous and too upside down. So he returned to his own chopping board.

“Hey,” he called with a sniff, after a few minutes of resolutely blinking off tears, “Senpai, come look at the onions, so you won't make me redo them like last time.”

The vegetables were brought under close inspection, he could see Kakashi’s jaw twitch.

“Just say it.” Tenzo winced, mentally preparing himself for a round two with the multi-layered demons.

“They are.. _alright._ ” Kakashi offered after a substantial pause, and it was the closest to a white lie he had ever seen the man get.

Tenzo shrugged, offering a small smile. “I don't cook.”

“Yes.” Hatake looked at him with absolute seriousness, and leaned down to steal his beer. “You photosynthesize.”

+

Somewhere among all that, they ended up kissing on Kakashi’s couch.  
  
Tenzo wasn’t sure what happened, but in a fraction of a second the mask was down, and that gorgeous mouth was on his, first with a demand, then - with a question. Kakashi’s hands were in his hair, running through, and stroking, and holding him in so tight.

He lost his breath for a second, and then found it once again, biting on Hatake’s lip, licking the line of sharp teeth, pushing the other man down against the pillows. Gods, he wanted this. He wasn’t even sure for how long. He felt the lean sides, and the strong lines of muscle, and the pliant curve of the back.

Kakashi moaned, and shoved his hips forward, and Tenzo lost his scraps of intelligent thought in all of this, and pressed himself against the smaller body. He wanted to hear that, again, and again, and again, Kakashi to going off like the world’s most perfect broken record under him.

He was aware that he was not being patient, nor gentle, nor careful, and that his hand that cupped Kakashi’s face was rough, and the angle of his mouth was hard. And he could tell that Hatake did not mind, by the simple eagerness of the other body, pulling him closer and closer in.

Tenzo could hear the ninken disappear with gentle poofs. He wished there was an amount of treats with which he could bribe forgiveness, but there was no way the dogs were letting them live any of this down.

A hand pressed at the center of his chest, and he sat up, trying to catch his breath and remember how to think about the world again. He could see lines and colors, but they refused to fold into shapes, and refused to carry meaning.

“Wait,” said Kakashi, a blur of messy white and the jonin blues.

Tenzo did, blinking, mind torn between the panic of what did they just do, and the memory of again, and again, and again. His head was ringing, as if someone was beating a metal pot right next to his ear.

“Fuck.” Hatake said a few moments later, running a hand down his face, and looking so lost with himself and the world that Tenzo wanted to reach out to him, but caught himself in the last moment.

And then Kakashi wasn’t looking at him, but somewhere at the coffee table, where dust tended to accumulate by one of the further legs.

And Tenzo didn't know what to say. He felt scared, that they unwillingly ruined their world of carefully balanced silences before figuring out what it was. And he did not know how to fix it.

“Should I-”, he licked the suddenly dry lips. “Should I go, Kakashi?”

“No.” Fingers locked firmly around his wrist. “You stay, I-”

“Alright.” He breathed out, too loudly and too nervously, trying to mask his relief. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was go. He needed this, his forehead falling against Kakashi’s shoulder, and the other’s fingers rising to stroke the back of his head.

They both needed to calm down.

“This is wild,” Kakashi informed him a few long moments after, letting out a hard breath of his own.

“I know right.” Tenzo found himself nearly laughing into the crook of his neck. “Senpai.”

“What?”

Kakashi’s hand in his hair now fell a bit lower, thumb tracing soothing circles, so he felt like he could say anything.

“I like you a lot.”

The fingers on his neck paused, and a breath was broken, and then he felt Kakashi freeze.

Tenzo rose his face to meet his eye, in question and concern.

The look Hatake gave him, the one of gentle, absolute surprise knocked all of the air out of him once more. Kakashi was blushing, and it was such a terrific and beautiful thing, that he wanted to see it again.

So Tenzo leaned in, and carefully pressed his lips to the corner of his mouth, just opposite to the mark.

It definitely worked, with Kakashi’s cheekbones coloring red, and he had to hold back, not to be kissing the swollen lips again.

“Do you want to?” He asked instead, astounded by the coarse, foreign sound of his own voice.

“Yeah.” Hatake nodded at him, with the same seriousness that surfaced whenever there was a decision to be made. And commanded. “Again.”  
+  
  
They took things slow, taking time and pleasure in allowing bodies, that were used to understanding each other through the frame of command and a tonality of friendship, to learn a different language. The after-dinners melded into before-breakfasts, and then during the long, lazy afternoons of the summer, sunlit Konoha.

It was fascinating, and there was something of a game to it. With Tenzo sneaking about his ANBU schedule, which took him out of the village for days and threw him back in at the oddest hours. From them learning how to say _I’m back_ , and _I was waiting_ , to remembering the small things, like refilling the spice rack. And yes - dealing with the dog pack’s jeers.  
  
At times, something between them would shortcut and explode in a jolt of electricity that would send the bowls off the shelves in the kitchen, doorframes cracked, and neighbors knocking on the wall. And Tenzo would slip out of bed in the early hours of the morning, mumbling lie that he knew Hatake would not buy, and rushing to his own place, to drink mercifully black coffee and shake off the feeling that they both are running off a cliff.  
  
Because the thing is, he was fucked.  
  
Tenzo could feel it in his bones, in the way that his body tensed at the sudden movement even as he would be at the heart of warm Konoha, and there was peace. In the way that shards of past memories tore through into the present, disrupting the flow of time and sending bolts of panicked, paralyzing energy down his spine. He had accepted that about himself, as a part of who he was, had given it space and shape within himself, and lived.

He had seen Kakashi writhing on the forest floor trying not to scream at the pain of a dislocated knee, watched his narrow, naked shoulders move as he was fixing his bandages in the ANBU locker room, learned to read the smallest emotions of amusement and displeasure through the porcelain mask. And yet none of that added up to what was happening between them, separated from it by the shroud of darkness that Kakashi was struggling to outrun and Tenzo thought he managed to cut off.

He was definitely infatuated before, at some point, when he had looked at Kakashi with the bright eyes of a child who was just discovering that there is more to the world than the training grounds of Root and a bowl of plain rice. But that adoration was grinded into respect, solid as the weight of his own bones, as a shape of a kunai in hand.

He could read and recite Hatake as the S-ranks in the Bingo Book. The understanding of the other’s body was already etched under his skin in ways he wasn’t aware of, in a flash of memory, or a jolt of nerves. It erases the boundaries of privacy when you manage to somehow not die next to each other day after day. It also erases who you are.

And Tenzo did not realize that, until he wanted to know for himself. Until was daydreaming during the mission briefings, or accidentally overwatering his flowers thinking of the night before. He wanted, and was terrified of how much he wanted, but some other part of him - which he knew no name for - clawed towards it, and screamed in triumph when he could not hold back. Kakashi was seeping into his days, as an echo in his thoughts, as a sweet memory of the body. And that sent him him running, away from himself.

And yet the force that dragged him in had a pull greater than anything which could hold them apart. And Tenzo, coming back, running up the set of familiar stairs, could only let it go. And was greeted with the usual wave.

Because Kakashi knew.

They had to learn and relearn so many things about each other. Because they could not remain entirely who they were before, if they wanted that freedom. The freedom not to be alone.

+

“So you getting laid now?”

They were out drinking, Hanae and he. It was a kind of thing you do when your double mission runs as smoothly as those things can, and you return back to Konoha, rinse off the travel dust, and realize that in the midst of all this you are somehow young, and alive, and you deserve a beer on a Wednesday night, because it is that kind of peace which is worth not-dying for.

“Hyuga.” She pointed at her milky blue eyes with two fingers, and then laughed at Tenzo’s bewildered expression, slapping his shoulder.

“Come on, Tenzo-taicho. You keep coming in from the other side of the village in the mornings. And just look better. Want to spill?”

Tenzo cradled the now-empty beer bottle in his hands and through of how no, he decidedly did not. The thing -- he didn’t make it to his nearly twentieth not to know how _things_ look like -- was still too young and too theirs to let anyone see it. Like a young sprout just emerging from the ground. He smiled at the analogy.

And he smiled even wider at the thought of Eagle’s face, were he to announce that yes, indeed, he is regularly screwing their former ANBU Captain, Hatake Kakashi. And it is great.

“Hey.” Hanae painfully poked him in the shoulder, and Tenzo rose his eyes: first to the bartender’s judgmental face, then to the flowering vines lacing the counter and the empty bottle.

Hanae just covered her eyes.

“Oh, Tenzo.”


	4. Chapter 4

Kakashi woke him up with an elbow into the ribs, and threw a pair of pants in his general direction. “Let's go, we’re already an hour behind. You’re making me look bad.”

Tenzo blinked sleepily. The clock on the nightstand showed eleven thirty five. His back ached, and he was at Kakashi’s for some reason - _ah_.

He made it to Konoha at dawn, right when the sun was coloring the village wall’s pink. And somehow, after the usual security checks, the locker rooms, and the showers, his half asleep body brought him here. It was closer to the ANBU headquarters, and had a softer bed, and a familiar shape next to his made it feel like home, and -

“Hey.” Hatake waved a hand before his face. “Hurry.”

“Let's go where?” Tenzo asked, feeling around for a turtleneck and then struggling to pull it over his head. But then realized that it was too small, Kakashi’s - and started looking for his own. 

He didn’t get his answer, as Hatake disappeared into the living room, yelling something along the lines of _no,_ no _, spit that chocolate out, you remember what happened last time_ , to what had to be one of his dogs. Tenzo couldn’t help but to smile.

He was desperately trying to sort out his bed hair, when Kakashi reemerged.

“Nevermind, Tenzo.” He sighed, grabbing him by the sleeve and hurriedly dragging him outside, down the flight of stairs, and into the street. “I promised that I will ..ah, introduce you to someone.”

Tenzo broke his hand out. “Wait, introduce me to whom?”

“ESTEEMED RIVAL.” A booming voice came from the other side of the street, there was a flash of green, and Kakashi was swept into a hug that nearly threw him off his feet. “So good to see you on your way as I was about to retrieve you! What a beautiful morning it is to spend in the company of friends!”

Tenzo knew Maito Gai, in the same way that everyone in Konoha inevitably knew him: by the obnoxious spandex and enthusiasm of Academy kids on their first kunai practice. He also knew that Kakashi and Gai, with their mad challenges and races through the village, went back to their earliest day of shinobi training, and was very glad they did.

Gai’s plea to join the ANBU inevitably spread through the divisions like wildfire despite the top secrecy glyphs. And the entire headquarters gasped in terror. The Green Beast was definitely qualified to make the cut, but his existence went so fundamentally against the very nature of Black Ops, that Lord Hiruzen must have taken it as a threat, and speeded Hatake’s discharge.

“Ah!” Gai’s overflowing joy was now directed towards him. “You must be Kakashi’s youthful companion!”

“Tenzo”, Kakashi offered a name, somewhat gingerly.

And before he could offer a greeting, or give Hatake a kick, Tenzo’s was locked into the tightest of embraces. “Wonderful! And I am MAITO GAI.”

He beamed once again, latched his arms around Kakashi and Tenzo’s shoulders and pulled them down the street. “But let us hurry, friends. The others are waiting!”

+

“You _could_ have warned me.” Tenzo hissed angrily into Kakashi’s ear, when they stopped before the Dango Shop, and Gai made his way forward to make explosively enthusiastic introductions.

“I didn’t know when you would return.” Hatake shrugged, and then turned to give him one of those under-the-mask smiles. “And besides, you’re always so charming.”

“Oh, Hatake. We’re only on our second pot of tea. You’re barely late this time.” Dragged a brown-haired jonin with a senbon between his teeth, and then turned to Tenzo. “Shiranui Genma. My condolences for your romantic choices.”

“Ha, look what the Cat dragged in.” A dark-haired woman in a wrap-up dress winked at Tenzo. Kurenai he knew. She was closely screened by the Root as a genjutsu specialist, and ran some of her missions with the Black Ops, when they were short on trackers. But ANBU were ANBU. It was a point of courtesy not to drop names when the masks were off.

“Yeah, Kakashi, so much for not picking them up on the job.” Another woman cut in, giving Tenzo a grin which somehow managed to be both wicked and reassuring. “I am Anko, dear. And don’t mind Shiranui. He’s grouchy when hungover.”

“Not on that job anymore.” Kakashi making his way to the end of the table, clearly comfortable and enjoying the mayhem. “And, Genma, when are you not hungover?”

“Tuesdays and and Thursdays. I have a morning rotation.”

“Sarutobi Asuma.” An imposing man with a dark beard reached out to offer Tenzo his hand. One of Hokage’s children. “It’s a Saturday thing we try do, back from the Academy days. Sorry to drag you in like this, but the dango is one the things Kakashi actually shows up to. And we had to see this for ourselves.”

“See what?” Tenzo blinked, accepting the handshake and helping himself down to a free seat.

“That he’s actually dating someone.” Anko supplied, “Like a _person_.”

Dating. Tenzo’s brain shortcutted, and all he could produce was a polite smile.

“Very nice to meet all of you.”

Gai’s broad hand landed on his shoulder in reassurance. “You too, Tenzo-kun!”

Kurenai snorted with laughter into her boba tea. “You won’t believe the effort it took us to actually get it out of Hatake that you exist.”

+

He have not had dango in a while. Or just sat down and talked to people who were not a part of his job, for that matter. Having friends outside of ANBU was hard, even when one had more to his past than a Root operative number, a list of codenames, and a set of suffocating nightmares to wake up from.

But it was nice, to sit and to listen, and to see how lives different from his trickle and fold into shape.

“It’s pretty exciting, these days.” Asuma was looking at Kurenai with a smile. “As we are all settling down, I hope. Gearing for teaching.”

“Yes,” she nodded, his affection reflecting in her gaze. “I will be taking my first genin team next year.”

“Well, you are. I will be guarding the Hokage.” Genma bragged. And Tenzo had to hand it to him, Flying Thunder Formation was an immensely difficult jutsu to master.

“Yes, with all the trouble old man gets himself into these days.” Anko supplemented, trying to poke him with her bare dango stick.

Everyone shared a laugh, and Tenzo smiled along, as Asuma launched into one of his father’s stories of how upstanding and virtuous were the shinobi of his generation under Tobirama-sama.

Gai was apparently taking him seriously, and erupted into a fountain of sentimental tears when Asuma reached his conclusion. Tenzo patted him on the shoulder in comfort.

Hatake’s friends were a nice crowd. Not what he was used to, but they were also not used to him. They didn’t pry him with questions, but also left enough room for him to step in. Sometimes Tenzo caught Kakashi’s eye resting on him through the conversation, and his desire to yell at Hatake afterwards was waning bit by bit, being replaced by a warm feeling of gratitude.

In the end, Anko pulled him into a hug. “We’ll be seeing you around, I hope.”

Gai gave him a thumbs up and a wink.

+

With everyone taking their leave, Tenzo made his way to the bathroom.

And after drying his hands, he gave himself a look in the mirror. Tired brown eyes, a scrape on his cheek that was still healing, well-worn standard issue turtleneck. But it was a good day, and some of its cheer settled into his face.

This was worth waking up for.

And then he caught a movement at the door, and weight of a hand on his shoulder. And, as he turned around, Kakashi’s lips were pressed softly against his.

They were practically in public.

But Tenzo’s mumble of indignation was used as an opportunity, and the kiss was carefully deepened, and a pair of hands fell down to softly hug his hips.

And Tenzo responded. He missed Kakashi, he missed kissing him, so he didn't mind doing it with his back pressed against the tile wall.

It was sweet, with the flavor of the dumplings’ tangy glaze still around in Kakashi’s mouth, and he made a point of reaching to collect it, tracing the smooth lines of the palate and the sharp corners of the teeth. He was getting lost in it, the texture of the other’s tongue, in how Kakashi’s body fitted so neatly against his own.

Their mouths were becoming sloppy, and their breathing ragged, and touches more and more demanding. And Tenzo was about to say that they should _really_ be getting home for that, when was pushed into a bathroom stall.

He glared at Hatake. This was a terrifically bad idea. A decisively four am bar activity, in which they were about to engage stonecold sober, during a lovely afternoon within a family friendly establishment.

This was exactly why some places held reservations against ninja customers.

“Oh, come on.” Kakashi gave him a wolfish grin, and slid to his knees, hands running up Tenzo’s thighs and finding their way under his shirt’s fabric. “Do this for me.”

The sight of that, combined with Hatake _asking_ , knocked some part of his brain out dead.

Tenzo ran his hand, encouragingly and impatiently, through Kakashi’s hair, stroking the white strands as Hatake was preparing to take him into his mouth. And then had to grab unto one of the stall’s walls to keep it together.

He held his eyes fixed on the white lights of the ceiling, and was trying to keep his mind on the random flickers in the lightbulb’s charge, and not on what would they do if someone will walk on them, or the wet sounds of Kakashi’s mouth, or the soft gasps which were his own.

Thoughts were becoming more and more sporadic, carried further apart on the waves of rising pleasure, until he lost himself to a twist of Kakashi’s tongue.

And then it was just static rushing through his head.

“Come here.” He could eventually manage, pulling Kakashi up into a kiss, which had now a tang of salt to it and felt suspiciously like a grin.

He palmed Kakashi’s erection through the rough fabric of the pants, and received an impatient hiss.

“Tenzo..”

“Right here.” He promised, kissing him again as he worked Kakashi’s standing dick out free, until it was sitting beautifully in his palm. And Hatake allowed him to do as he wished, giving in into the quick, sure rhythm, and burying his moans into the curve of Tenzo’s neck.

And then Tenzo was holding Kakashi against him, on weak legs, and could feel the soft electric charges prickling across his skin where Hatake’s hand was running over his bicep. The whole thing was nearly embarrassingly quick, but that actually in their favour.

“Happy?” He asked, getting his hand out of the sticky mess between them, but not quite ready to move.

“Yeah.” Kakashi confirmed, getting off him, and meeting his eye with a lazy smile on a maskless face. So Tenzo just had to kiss him again.

“Now let’s get out of here.”

+

When trying to _discreetly_ make their way out, they ran head first into Genma, who was leaning against the wall opposite to the bathroom’s door, hands crossed on his chest and looking menacingly amused.

“Hatake, you owe me for this one.” He twirled the senbon in Kakashi’s direction, and received a look of bewildered innocence from under the hitai-ate.

Tenzo, on the other hand, could feel himself growing nearly impossibly red. “Eh… Thanks.”

“You, don't mention it.” Genma waved his hand in dismissal, as they were stepping outside, into the dusty street. “Besides, I managed to get the hostesses’ phone number while I was keeping guard.”

Tenzo preferred not to think about what those two activities involved, but he could have sworn Kakashi snickered.

“Anyways. Take care, you two.” Genma smirked back at him, before setting off unto the nearest rooftop.

It should have been around three.

Twelve hours ago, Tenzo was crawling through the forest mud, carrying the intelligence supply scrolls, and trying to avoid the attention mercenaries’ tracker. And that somehow left him less affected than the fact that he met Kakashi’s friends, and Hatake blew him in the bathroom stall afterwards.

All while he was on four hours of sleep.

“You know what.” He sighed. “I’m going back to bed.”

"Your bed." He added, before Kakashi could say anything. It was softer, after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hatake, can't take you anywhere. Genma, you're enabling him.


	5. Chapter 5

But truth be told, they were gravitating more and more towards Tenzo place.

Kakashi’s coffee was notoriously awful. And if Tenzo had to draw the line somewhere, it would be having to wake up to nothing but instant for a week.

“I swear there are more plants here every time around.” Kakashi would say, carefully stepping around a fiddle leaf fig, which Tenzo had recently moved into the hallway. It felt really confident about itself in the past few weeks, and started to climb tall, closer to direct sunlight, and so making the golden pothos and a family of bamboo palms in the same corner uncomfortable.

“They just show up. I can't turn them away.” Tenzo would shrug, as he leaned down to see how the plant was doing in its new location, checking up on the humidity of the soil, and gently petting its big, bushy leaves in encouragement.

He enjoyed leaving Kakashi to guess whether he was serious or not.

The neighborhood was a longer run to both the ANBU headquarters and the jonin tower, but it was also a quieter one, with more civilian residents and a shorter walk to the river.

And, for once, better water pressure.

Tenzo was pretty convinced that it was the shower that won Hatake over, judging by how much time and hot water he hogged in there.

So one day, Kakashi sat cross-legged on the floor of his kitchen, pulled out all of his pots and pans, reorganized them according to shape and function, reshelved all the spices, and defrosted the fridge.

Tenzo was watching all of that with mild horror from across the room.

“There is _rust_ on your cast iron.” Hatake turned to him, with more menace in his eye than Tenzo had ever witnessed, holding the wounded sukiyaki pot on his lap. It was one of the finer ones, with a crafted wooden handle and thick sturdy walls, to keep the heat of the broth in during long winter evenings.

“I did not know it was there on the first place.” Tenzo raised his hands in defense. He had honestly forgot. A nurse he thought he had a thing for gave it to him as a housewarming present back in the day, and it just stayed around. Like many other things that filled his life which he didn't exactly know how to handle.

Kakashi gave him another look of silent judgement. And then sighed, running  his fingers over the damaged surface. And got up.

“Come here. I think we can still clean this.”

+

When it came to Team Ro, the hardest thing to realize that he was not Kakashi. Not the Hound, but a Cat. And that he would not be the same sort of a Captain. And that things, from top to bottom, would inevitably be different.

And he had to figure this out on his own.

In many cases, Tenzo lacked Kakashi’s foresight, the ability to think on his feet, and the manic drive to get the job done. But he was a better at understanding and controlling the field, weighing in on the risks, and pushing through them. He grounded himself in the plans and the people he worked with, and latched his roots into every opportunity and opening.

“You better watch it, Captain.” Hanae would deadpan from under the mask, always a step behind him. ”Just think of what would happen if Analytics gets its hands on you.”

And Tenzo would glare.

And Hanae would glare back, and she would win, because she was a Hyuga.

And then he would dart down, from the tree branches, sending mokuton growing in waves under his feet. And she would follow, without needing a sign.

Under him, the Team was not a spear, but a shield.

They used a different standard formation, a different way of communicating across the battlefield, and a different system of paying for drinks. The change of that settled within them before they knew what to call it.

But the Team figured it out, realigned its corners, and accepted the new station of things. As they always did.

Along with the whole dating matter.

“Tell Hatake to take care.” Yoji told him one night, when they were parting ways after the spar. And Tenzo nodded, stacking away his shuriken. And that was that.

Even though everyone enjoyed Kakashi’s migration from the former Captain to “boyfriend” category a bit too much.

Yugao, previously having to bear the burden of the only person on the Team in a relationship, was taking a particular pleasure in watching him struggle against the jabs of the ANBU.

But then she would also be the one to catch up with him in the hallway, her hand on his arm. “Hey, you should bring Kakashi to the poker game. It had been a while.”

“I’ll-” He responded with surprise, and then uncertainty. “I’ll ask.”

“Tenzo.” She suddenly became just a notch more serious. “I think that you have a good thing. Both of you. Congrats.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

+

And yet, there were some parts to this at which they were amazingly bad.

“I don’t care.” Kakashi shrugged.

“I care,” said Tenzo. “And I will care about this in a way that I see is right.”

Kakashi gave the whole enterprise a silent look, and folded his arms on his chest.

The mattress was still stuck in the doorway, and neither of them really knew how to go about it.

“You can't fold it.” Tenzo repeated, in what felt like a millionth time. “The springs won't go back to the same places.”

Hatake got himself off the wall he was leaning against, and went to do so against the mattress instead, making his point in silence. They were at it for the past half an hour, but the cursed thing was not moving, no matter from which angle they tried.

It started when Tenzo decided that he needed a new bed. The old one came with the place, and he really didn't want to think how many generations of tenants went through it that the boxspring had actual dents.

Before, he didn't mind. It was a definite upgrade from the ANBU barracks, and followed a function, of a thing which people should own, and on which he passed out. And, like most things he owned, was not intended to be shared with another person.

But now a brand new mattress, a physical manifestation of the lingering changes in his life, hauled up the staircase and through the apartment door, carefully maneuvered between the couch, and the plant pots, and bookshelves, got stuck because of the awkward corner of his bedroom.

Maybe, he was taking it harder that he should have. Maybe.

“This is a load-bearing wall.” Tenzo eyed the doorframe with malice. “Concrete. I can’t just raise it with motukon.”

And he could practically hear Kakashi’s patience snap.

Hatake gave him one more look. “Step aside.”

And before Tenzo could say anything, there was a trickle of ozone in the air. Kakashi sent the mattress flying through the door with a chakra-powered kick.

It hit the opposite wall, and feel on the floor with a thud, consuming most of the walking space. Tenzo could hear the springs weeping.

Not looking back at him, Hatake stepped inside the room, and pulled the mattress on the previously assembled frame. And went to retrieve the bedding from the closet.

“You know what.” Tenzo was watching him, out of words. “You do whatever the hell you want.”

Kakashi just threw him a pillow, which he stuffed into its case with silent exasperation.

Together, they worked on the sheets, with Hatake not raising his head or losing an inch of care and mechanical precision with which he handled things.

Tenzo was increasingly fuming. Slowly losing the grasp on his own control, unsure what was going on. Somehow he thought he was above Kakashi’s silent treatments.

When they were done, he fell on the bed, covering his face with his hands and trying to figure out what exactly was he so angry about. This was foolish, and he couldn’t. He took a deep breath, running his hands through his hair, and saw that Kakashi didn't move, remaining where he were, single eye frozen on him.

“Are you done now?” He asked, with an arched eyebrow. There was amusement in his voice, but also a cold crack that Tenzo recognized from when the orders were passed down the Team formation.

Tenzo held the gaze, which suddenly felt heavy and wild, and made his throat dry, and warmth run through his limbs, sending his blood racing.

“Yes.”

And Kakashi smiled, and fell on top of him.

They did not bother getting up.

+

The sheets ended up mercilessly skewed, as they lay tangled together.

Tenzo was thinking that he should probably get up and shower, and there were still things for him to do this evening. But his next few days were free, and the arm thrown across his chest was entirely not encouraging movement.

He was absently stroking Kakashi’s back, fingers running over that one familiar scar, and thinking of whether he should apologize, or whether - in some alternate reality - Kakashi should, or if the Hatake method of fucking their problems out was actually a valid one.

In either case, none of the above seemed to be of Kakashi’s concern, when he pressed a kiss into Tenzo’s shoulder.

“I will be out on an A-rank to Grass starting next week. Are you around until then?”

“Yeah.” Tenzo agreed, surprised with how hoarse his voice still was. “The Team is off the roster for a while.”

Which meant that they had practically six days together. With him writing his reports and Kakashi running around the village, this was a present.

“There is a game,” he remembered. “This Saturday at Ko’s. Do you want to come?”

“Sure thing.” Kakashi said, his voice not changing, but in a way that was clearly hiding a change.

“Yugao passed on the invite. But you don't have to, if-”

“If I’m not ANBU anymore?” Kakashi finished the sentence, turning in his arms.

That was not what Tenzo meant, but there were no better way to put it, in the end.

“Sorry.” He offered, and pulled Kakashi into a kiss. He wasn’t sure if his brain could handle a more in depth conversation on the matter.

“Don't keep it in mind.” Hatake replied, breath warm against his mouth, and sliding to straddle his hips once more.

The red ink of the tattoo was visible on his shoulder in fading light, and Tenzo wondered if there is even such a thing as a former ANBU.

He sincerely hoped there were.

+

Kakashi was missed. It was obvious from the door.

The Team met him with cracked smiles, and heads turning in unison, and a sense of warmth that carried through the room when he stepped in. Hatake himself seemed astounded by it.

Tenzo thought of how it might feel to be back, without a rank, without a place. But decided that it was not up to him, and left Kakashi to the attentions of the Team, quietly stepping to the kitchen to stick the beer pack they brought into the fridge.

“Hey, Hatake.” He heard Ko’s voice when shutting the freezer door. “Don’t mess our boy up too much. We just started to be on time for things, with him at helm.”

“Yeah, but now we’re the ones in charge of the coffee, because of that.” Yoji complained. “Intelligence says that we have years of that to make up, for all room prep we dodged with you. And hazelnut. Who in hell drinks hazelnut.”

“Hey, it goes well with the cinnamon rolls.” Tenzo protested, stepping back into the main room. “We can have a list of options to go around, and people can pick their preferences-”

“Gods.” Yugao sighed, dropping her face on the table, where the cards were already out. “Kakashi, I can count on you. Get me drunk.”

Hatake was leaning back on his chair, beer in hand, hiding a grin under the mask and an unfazed expression. He missed this as much as he was missed, Tenzo could tell.

When the cards were dealt, and the game began.

It is hard to go against someone whom you know so well, and that was the fun part about it.

Kakashi’s participation was generally ruled unfair, because he was hiding so much of his face. But so was Yoji’s beatles, and Hanae’s byakugan, and Yugao’s threats, and Tenzo’s general pleasant nature. And Ko was under constant suspicion because the appartement was his, and he was a medic and therefore could technically drug them all.

Tenzo had a suspicion that they were actually terrible at poker, but good at playing it against each other. And with Hatake back at the table, it felt like an old but familiar song was on the radio. They all knew the words, and could follow the tune blindly, and enjoyed it nonetheless.

He did make sure that his eye crossed with Kakashi’s once in a while, to get a silent _it's all is fine_ , and a look just between the two of them.

Which did backfire spectacularly.

When the first game was done, Kakashi’s hand lingered on his shoulder, and masked lips were pressed too close to his ear when he was whispering something about Yugao’s cards.

Everyone was watching. And Hatake knew that, taking time to spread himself all over Tenzo’s personal space and make his damn point. They were together.

And Tenzo could feel his face grow hot.

“You can't just take the Captain out of commission like that.” Hanae tried not to laugh, stirring her that.

“I think we ruled seduction permissible at the table, no?” Yoji interjected, with an equal smirk.

“Yes, but Kakashi’s actually works.” The Hyuga rose her eyebrow at him, and then smiled. “Cheers to that.”

Everyone laughed. And the night continued to dissolve into a warm fuzz of the conversation and glimmering of yellow lights.

+

There were heading back with a sweet, lightheaded feeling between them.

The street was blissfully empty and beautiful through that emptiness, as only streets in quiet neighborhoods can be at two in the morning. The moon wasn’t at its fullest, but gave enough light for them to know their way without having to tap into the chakra flows or follow the wider alleys.

Kakashi was quiet with one of his pensive silences, which, as Tenzo learned, could then leap into any direction, and were as beautiful as the empty nights.

He was a man falling.

“You know, didn’t think I could do this.” Kakashi spoke, out of nowhere and wistful.

“Do what?” For a second, Tenzo was thrown off his step.

“See everyone.”

“Well, what did you think would happen.” Tenzo smiled.

“I don’t know.” Kakashi shrugged, voice sliding into a sort of empty detachment it pained Tenzo so much to hear. “It was all dark.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked at Hatake. And it took Kakashi a few more steps to catch up on that, and look at him also. Silence hang between them like a piece of cloth, ebbed by the wind.

Under their friendship, under the bonds forged, Team Ro were ANBU. And a sort of darkness was written into them, into what Kakashi remembered of himself along their side, and it was now pulling him back. And Tenzo recognized that at the same moment Hatake recognized it within himself.

And then Tenzo felt a body press against him, asking for all the warmth he could give on a chilly night, drawing him into a tight hug.

“Too much?” he held Kakashi back, not knowing the proper words, not sure if there were any needed.

The familiar patterns, it turned out, the ones which take you in and tell you who you are, can also be the ones to wound you. Old tunes and familiar words are the easiest traps, and you should be careful around them, because they take the longest to unlearn.

“Nearly was.” Kakashi breathed, giving himself time, and not pulling away quite yet. “Just. Let's get home.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a heads up, detailed depictions of PTSD-related symptoms bellow. 
> 
> we have to go down a bit before going up again.

To say that one had nightmares was one of the most unimaginative things a shinobi could do.

They all did.

You did not go through an entire life of learning how to deal and endure pain, without some of it coming to haunt you back.

Tenzo dreamed of the green darkness of Orochimaru’s tank, where he could scream and scream and scream, and those he knew would simply pass him by on the other side of the thick glass. He dreamed of the first man he killed, of how a kunai went through a throat so neatly, and the blood poured down his hand in a warm flow. He dreamed of a girl he saw when passing through a ransacked village during the war. She was lying dead in the rice fields, blood from her split gut mixing with the water which coated the gentle greens.

It was rarely a single thing, but rather one story repeating itself with numerous endings, twisting like a hungry vine and feeding off his days, to fold itself into new, irresolvable iterations.

The trick was to not let the darkness it stirred to tell you who you are.

It was his luck, that he had to cleave himself out of that darkness from the beginning. To find his own name, and through that understand that he was separate from it. That his past did not rule him, no more than the weight of the kunai in his hand or the grasp of ANBU armor on his shoulders. It could shape him, but couldn’t tell him who he were.

And he wished he had the words to tell that to Kakashi. But also understood, that even if he could explain something so intrinsic, which he felt on the tips of his fingers and within his very core, the very effort of it would be wrong.

Because Kakashi learned who he was through loss.

It chipped away at him, time after time, leaving him with less and less choice the more he struggled against it. Until he could do nothing, but let the darkness within himself, and let it take a hold him so that he could keep going on. So he would bring white lilies to the cemetery and stand there for hours, frozen over the names of his dead.

They all had nightmares, but Kakashi’s were sucking him to the bone.

Tenzo had learned their patterns. It was the erratic behaviour through the day, eruptions of rage, recklessness, and then stillness, as if nothing what Kakashi saw and felt was able to reach him. And a very specific kind of a flat I’m fine.

In fact, Hatake was really fucking good at pretending that he is fine. Tenzo guessed that it came with being afraid that he would lose more, that Kakashi only got away with a reputation of an eccentric and a professional.

It was years in the field together, where being not fine actually mattered, when Tenzo could drag Hatake out in the open, and get him to trust him with this. And he was always there, as a witness, when he would see his senpai suffocating in the fear of his own dreams, stir him awake, and then look away to allow him his dignity, and as comrade, when Kakashi would grab onto his forearm swallowing the dry sobs that tore through his throat.

Now, when they were lovers, and slept next to each other not because some sort of necessity drove them to this, but because they chose to, Tenzo felt like he had a right to intrude on Kakashi’s darkness.

The regular nightmares, which passed like clouds over the moon, he could do something about.

Tenzo slept lightly, and if he would wake up to Kakashi’s sharp breaths and the same names being called upon over and over between them, he would quietly stir him awake. And Kakashi would give a dazed nod of gratitude, and either turn to his other side, or press closer to him, seeking comfort in the weight of his body and demanding his solace like every being hurt.

The violent ones, when he woke up to Kakashi thrashing and the sharingan turning wildly under the closed eyelid, he had to wait out. It was just the body recoiling against memory of what it had endured, he knew.

On a good night, it would pass, and Hatake would wake up and not remember that it happened. And on a bad one, Kakashi wouldn't not remember himself, until he was over the sink, scraping his left hand clean until the water would run pink.

And then Tenzo would have to drag him away, and try to shake him awake until the confused eye came into focus on him. And then Kakashi would sit still like a statue as he brought out the antiseptic and the bandages, and worked on the grazes on his hand.

And those were the nights when Tenzo was scared, because there was nothing else he could do. It was a strongest of feelings, which had sent its roots deep inside him, twisting and rearranging things within, and turning his words and mind into new directions.

He could not will the darkness away, because it did not belong to him, and yet he felt the anguish of it when Kakashi could not find himself within it. He did his best not to let it show, with his steady hands and an easy tone.

They didn’t talk about this. Tenzo understood. Just as Kakashi understood his fear of closed spaces, and large crowds, and lights turned sharply on, and would at times walk one step ahead of him when they were in the village together.

Hatake did not talk about his family, but there was no need to. Everyone would talk about it for him. Tenzo had no one to talk about, with his Root operative number and list of codenames still being the most of all the official documents carried.

But then Tenzo dreamed. Of himself, screaming and screaming and screaming inside the green darkness of Orochimaru’s tank, and then - of Kakashi, in his old ANBU uniform, who could not hear him on other side of the thick glass, and continued to scrape his hand clean. And Tenzo watched blood mix into the water.

And then Kakashi would wake him up, and stare at him with his serious eye, and refuse to let him go until they both were asleep, tangled in the mess of knowing, blankets twisted between their legs.

They had each other. And this was who they were.

+

It was dark out.

He wasn't sure what stirred him, but Tenzo woke up to Kakashi sitting up in their bed, his breaths torn and heavy. And when Tenzo reached out to him, on which was now pure instinct, to brush his fingers against his thigh in comfort, Hatake jerked away from the touch, as if burned.

“Fuck,” he managed, choking on whatever was tearing through his ribcage and trying to constrain the small, pathetic sounds of fear eascaping it. “I didn't mean to wake you up.”

  
“It’s alright.” Tenzo’s sleep flew off in a second, as he pushed himself up on the elbow, reading into the tense line of shoulders and a turned away gaze, searching for what was wrong.

He was about so speak again, when the two wild eyes looked at him, one swirling with the burning red of the sharingan and the other - too dark and too wide. And as Tenzo slowly sat up, he did best not to be afraid.

“Hey.” He called softly, keeping his own gaze lowered. “Listen to me. Close your eye.”

“Fuck.” Kakashi cursed again, and pressed his palm against the left socket, falling back into the sheets. His chest was rising and falling heavily, as he labored against an immense weight. “I’m leaving. You don’t need to see this.”

“It’s two in the fucking morning.”

Tenzo’s soothing tone was forgotten in indignation. Sharingan or not, sometimes he just forgot how stupid the man could be. “You will tell me what you need. And then we’ll go to sleep, and talk about this tomorrow, if you want to.”

He held his breath. If Kakashi chose to go, he could not hold him, and there would be nothing more he could do.

And Hatake would stand over the memorial stone until he won't be able to feel his skin, and then would drag himself home in the early morning, fish out some old painkillers out of the drawer, pass out on them, and then be three hours late to whatever he had to do. Tenzo had been around long enough to know how those things went.

He watched Kakashi sit up. But instead of getting out of bed, Hatake looked at him again. And now Tenzo could catch his expression.

And more than anything, Kakashi was scared.

He had a look of a haunted, with things no one else could see twirling around him, and memories revisiting him so real that they subjugated the pace of reality and the pounding of his heart.

It was a sort of disruptive panic Tenzo knew from himself, when a sense of being in constant danger that finds its way under your skin and does not want to leave.

“You don't have to say.” He promised, with as much assurance as he could muster, even as he could feel his own worry building up in his throat. _It’s safe_.

Silence hung.

And then Kakashi did one of the hardest things Tenzo ever witnessed him do. Kakashi was stepping over himself, over the patterns that tied together his body, and his mind, and the red brand of ANBU, that sent him on crippling rounds of destruction and fear.

Tenzo saw that shift happen, with the moments of uncertainty and the uneasy angle of the body, the pained turned of the neck. But then Kakashi’s fingers fell into his, and Hatake closed both of his eyes shut, as a sharp breath of both exhaustion and relief rolled from his lips.

They sat still in the darkness, and Tenzo watched Kakashi put himself back together against it piece by piece, felt fingers clutching his, tracing warm circles inside his palm. And great pride, and great admiration were rising inside him, and he allowed them to settle, in how his arms wrapped around Kakashi, mindful of another’s space.

He could still feel the frantic pounding of the other’s heart, and wished that there were more words between them, and not just silences. But he could not promise that everything would be fine. Or give Kakashi absolution or forgiveness for whatever was driving him mad with pain and guilt, but he could be here, and hope that it would be enough to keep him off the edge.

“This is so fucked.” Hatake spoke, into the crook of his shoulder, and Tenzo could but hum in agreement, reliefed to hear a voice less distorted by itself. Kakashi’s fingers tightly squeezed his.

Hatake was eventually knocked out by sheer exhaustion, and was drifting in and out of uneasy sleep, a single eye opening from time to time to look at Tenzo, as they settled back against each other.

And Tenzo started to feel his own head swim.

He could feel the familiar warmth by his side, and the hand on his chest was promising that even if things are not fine right now, they might be some day, in the future.

And as he allowed his eyes to close, he felt a hand running through his hair, saying all the silent things of care and gratitude.

+

Tenzo woke up to the sound of water running from the kitchen, and, _fuck_ , was his first thought, before his eyes flew open and he sat up on the bed. _He missed it_.

The scrambled out into the hallway and took a sharp turn into the kitchen, hitting his shoulder against the doorframe.

And breathed out.

Kakashi was just setting up the kettle, Tenzo’s slightly-too-big t-shirt hanging over his shoulders.

Tenzo was blinking off the last bits of sleep, when single eye met his, weary and guilty. Kakashi guessed what the through was happening, the continuation of last night’s episode. _That the water would be running pink_.

“Morning.” He offered, rubbing the bruised shoulder and trying to hide the haste from his posture. The grey light of early morning shone through his every pretense.

“Morning to you too, Tenzo.” Came a different voice, gruffy and deep. Pakkun was sitting on one of the chairs at the kitchen table, as serious and introspective as always.

“Nice to see you.”

Tenzo extended his hand to the ninken, and was permitted a brief scratch behind the ear, as Pakkun grumbled something in acknowledgement.

“It’s for your coffee thing.” Kakashi explained, shrugging in the kettle’s general direction and picking up his tea mug from the table.

“Thank you,” Tenzo smiled. He could almost feel offended. And this morning could almost feel normal, one of the precious few they got to spend together without a rush of responsibilities and vague mission talk.

If not the signs of weariness in Kakashi’s face. Not the deeper circles under his eyes and the slouch of his shoulders.

Tenzo stepped closer in, to look Hatake straight in the eye. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m good,” was the response, as Kakashi ducked out of his personal space and leaned back against the kitchen counter. His face went back into the unreadable sort of guilt, before he hid it back into the tea, single eye trapped by the empty space of a table in front of him.

  
And Tenzo wanted to howl, in love and desperation. Wanted to grab Kakashi by the shoulders and shake him, until that tea splashed all over, until that eye was on what they have now, and not on what left him half-blind years ago. _Take your time, recover, your dipshit_. He wanted to yell. _You are not betraying anyone by being weak_.

Instead, he nodded, and turned towards the stove. “How do you want your eggs?”

And the ninken was watching them with knowing, eternal eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

Their things started to mysteriously migrate from place to place.

First, Tenzo spent half of the morning looking for his storage scroll, had to make up elaborate excuses for why he had to work with borrowed equipment that day in the headquarters, and then discovered it at Kakashi’s two days later. He did not know how the thing got there, but decided that with all the chakra-charged items inside, it knew better.

He started to really notice the change when Kakashi’s paperbacks started to appear. First a few of them were left forgotten on the kitchen counter, then on the floor next to the bed, then on the windowsill. And then they all started to gravitate towards the coffee table, forming a neat and increasingly growing stack, until Tenzo had acknowledged defeat and cleared out a space on the bookshelf, right next to his architecture references.

Before long, Tenzo realized that he had a two of everything. Two toothbrushes were looking at him from the bathroom, and the bed now had two lived-in sides to it. Two pairs of favourite chopsticks in the kitchen, two umbrellas next to the front door fell into a pattern, which he could read like the signs of Konoha’s shops or hum like a song. And the world seemed both fuller and lighter from it.

Soon after, he had to make room in his closet for Kakashi’s stuff. Not that there was that much to move. He just shoved all of his uniform blues to the side, and the few proper civilian outfits he owned went to the upper shelf. And then Kakashi sighed, and refolded all of his things while Tenzo watched in silent fascination.

Just as he thought he started to understand Hatake’s accuracy fits, and how they mixed in with the irregular sleeping patterns, general disinterest in punctuality, and a habit of stealing his t-shirts, Kakashi would throw a wrench into whatever working theory he had.

Because despite his dedication to precision in the kitchen, Hatake couldn't bake.

Nothing would rise, the proportions inevitably came out wrong, the filling on the buns ran, cake layers burned, and mochi fell apart. And Tenzo would feel pity, if it weren’t so thoroughly entertaining to see Kakashi huff over measurements and weights, and try to keep his composed exterior in the face of too small eggs.

“I hate sweet stuff anyways.” Kakashi would shrug off any of Tenzo’s attempts of consolation, as he would poke another batch of pastries which ended on the lower side of mediocre, and make notes on the cook book’s margins.

“So why keep trying?”

“Principle.” Hatake would respond, and produce a jar of pink sprinkles from the cupboard. He called that decoration.

+

In the end, it was on Tenzo to make his way through a pile of cookies, which tasted like a desert made of sugar and looked like shapeless white lumps with almonds sticking out of them. Hatake was drinking his ginger tea next to him in solidarity.

They were nested in the corner of Kakashi’s kitchen.

Early dusk of late fall wrapped itself around the village outside, and Tenzo was infinitely glad to be away from the heavy leaden clouds, and next to Kakashi’s pretentious taste in tea and legs resting on top of his under the table.

Tenzo’s chair had a shaky base, but he loved it, because he knew how to lean against the wall just right not to collapse on the ground after an awkward movement, because the chair was his.

It would have been perfect, if the cookies weren't so damn dry.

“Camomile?” Kakashi repeated an offer from earlier, as Tenzo nearly choked on powdered sugar.

“Please.”

Kakashi’s kettle was electric, but so old and tired that Tenzo wouldn't expect it to work when he first saw it, which was years ago, but now it was definitely living its last days. And would not turn on.

Hatake pressed the button on it a few times, observed the lack of outcome, and then sent a jolt of electricity into the the poor thing, folding his hands in a quick seal.

With mild interest, Tenzo watched the lights in the apartment flicker on and off, before the kettle went straight to busy bubbling. A smell of charred plastic sat in the air.

“You are really set on burning the wiring in this place.”

He really tried to sound disapproving, but it was hard thing to do when your entire face covered in sugar. And when you already made peace with Hatake Kakashi being a regular menace to Konoha’s electric grid. Tenzo thought that randomly sprouting greens was bad, until they had to deal with the consequences Kakashi blowing out the building’s fuses during sex.

“Ba, I don't know if I will keep it.”

“Hm?”

As he was handing him the mug, Kakashi just jerked his shoulder, in a way which Tenzo came to know as a stand-in for _not ANBU anymore_.

“Shouldn't it be about the same for a jonin-sensei?” He carefully blew on the surface of the golden liquid.

With their isolated regiment, special missions, and a code of ethics which could be summed up by Hokage’s orders, the Black Ops made double from the average Konoha-nin, about which Tenzo frequently forgot. Service itself was an honor.

“I’m not teaching, so they’re not paying.”

“Ah.” Tenzo said over his tea. “You can always come stay with me, and figure it out from there.”

Kakashi blinked, not understanding.

“Move in.” Tenzo offered, without quite realizing what he was offering. Until Kakashi’s frozen expression made him stumble over his own thoughts.

“I can’t.” Hatake looked like he had hit a wall, or went fully blind, staring blankly in front of himself.

“Why?”

“I can't promise you anything.”

Tenzo was surprised by how much those words had cut him inside, and then by the sharpness in his own voice. “I don’t need your promises.”

“Then what do you want?”

“You. Here. As long as you want to.” Tenzo spoke, strong and earnest.

And Kakashi was slowly crumbling under his gaze. He had shuffled through space awkwardly, as if it were foreign for him, as if he were trapped, and was searching for an exit which was not there.

And Tenzo was very close to throwing the mug in his face.

He could not quite place what he was feeling because he was too busy feeling it. As if the warm, pulsing thing inside of him exploded into a thousand piercing shards, which tore through his throat and his chest and his tongue, and left him immobile.

It was either that paralyzed silence, or the way the broken chair squeaked that made Kakashi look him in the eye, and recognize his wrong.

“Sorry.” He offered, with unexpected sincerity. “Sorry.”

Tenzo still contemplated throwing the mug against the floor, but it was one of his favorites, with the Konoha Gardening Festival logo he got a few years back. And again, somehow it ended up at Kakashi’s.

So he just sighed.

A hand reached out to take the mug out of his, and gently put it on the table, brushing over his knuckles in the process.

“Listen.” He said, breathing out in frustration. “I don't know how to do this any better than you do.” _But if you want to call quits like this, a lot of things will be broken_.

“Tenzo,” Kakashi called, lacing his fingers with his. “Let's do it.”

“Do what?” Tenzo did not take his eyes from his tea, going cold inside the porcelain circle of the mug.

“What do you think.” There was a grin in Kakashi’s voice, a painfully familiar one, which made him look up, and meet the single dark eye.

And it was the same focus, and the same jolt of adrenaline that passed between them, as when they were partners, and he was catching Kakashi’s orders thrown across the wind in the field.

“We’re doing this.” Kakashi promised, and Tenzo let out a breathing laugh. It was the same excitement of when they were teenagers, and had things to prove, and the world seemed sharper and smaller, and recklessness -justified.

What they were now, sitting together in Hatake’s kitchen, was ages away from what they started as, and felt so wondrously, dazzlingly different, and yet inexplicably same.

He kissed Kakashi’s hand.

+

Tenzo’s consciousness kicked in later than night.

He didn’t leave Hatake his choice, when he said he should move in, because that was what he wanted. He wanted that a lot, but that didn't make it right. Hell, he almost pushed Kakashi towards it.

With the thought making rounds in Tenzo’s head there came familiar pull, to escape, to get out of the apartment, to be alone and deal with whatever was going on inside him. However, the fact that he was in his pajama pants, and sitting cross-legged on Kakashi’s bed, was holding him firmly in place.

Instead, it seemed, they had to talk about it.

“Kakashi.” He called, to the running water of the bathroom.

“Hm?” Hatake had peeked out into the hallway, with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, white hair more of a mess than usual.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have offered.”

“Hm.” Kakashi repeated, and disappeared back inside. And them emerged again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What are you talking about?” If anything, he seemed amused, eyes folded into semi-circles of a smile.

“And I shouldn't have insisted.” Tenzo continued, as if on a post-mission debrief. This was the only way he could get it out of himself.

It took Kakashi a few seconds to catch on what he was talking about, and then his expression went blank, and then puzzled. He cocked his head, and something was just a miniscule bit off in his voice.

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a yes, but -” Tenzo made an uncertain gesture, now feeling bad for bringing up the whole thing up on the first place. “Not that. Wait-”

He interrupted himself, seeing that Kakashi was about to say something. “I should have found a better way to ask.”

“Maybe.” Kakashi agreed, after a pause.

And Tenzo didn't know how to respond.

He rarely felt younger against Hatake. The four years between them, which seemed like an unbridgeable gap of experience before had now became a weathered line he nearly stopped noticing.

But this time he did.

In some ways, Kakashi was still wiser, and more patient, and accepted some things which rattled Tenzo’s core with more grace.

“I don’t know how to do this any better than you do.” Kakashi broke the silence, echoing him from earlier.

Tenzo groaned, and fell back on the bed.

They were drenched in each other’s lives, saturating routines and habits and forging some which were their own. And with that came a power they held over each other. A power that neither of them could expect or forsee, or more so know how to handle it gently.

There would always be an imbalance, between the lover and the loved, and Tenzo wasn't always sure on what side of it he fell, or of what quite they were to each other.

“Come on.” Hatake teased, breaking the pattern of his thoughts. “Who else will eat the things I bake?”

“You can always feed them to the Intelligence.” Tenzo made an effort not to fall for the humor, and kept stoically staring at the ceiling. “Gods know they deserve it.”

Kakashi snorted, and made a graceless effort out of climbing into the bed over him and flopping on his side of it.

Sweetly, he pressed his lips against Tenzo’s check.

“I still have a reputation to maintain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i swear i'm not playing with y'all. i was sincerely expecting to finish this fic at four chapters, but my drafts keep exploding at me.


	8. Chapter 8

Kakashi was terrified of words. As if he were scared that things would disappear the moment he would name them, so he skirted around meanings with roundabout gesture and conversation, incredibly adept at saying things without actually calling on them.

And it was a language of its own, the one which Tenzo learned to appreciate. Hatake spoke with touch, gentle or impatient, but nearly always inadvertently within Tenzo’s space when they were together, leaning towards him like flowers do towards the sun. And with actions, simply doing things around him without either explanation or pretense, or throwing Tenzo a pair of keys from his place and leaving him to rest with the implications.

And it was enough. This was who Kakashi was.

But Tenzo himself was different. Hatake was the first to teach him the value of words, and the power and weight naming things carried, back when he first got his name. And he had since paid great attention to how he said things, combing through his books on architecture, history, and poetry, trying to find the exact forms into the which world folded itself.

Which means that now he was reading Makeout Paradise.

There was also a part of nostalgia to the poor printing and a loud name. He learned his hiragana from the series. Kakashi dragged those paperbacks everywhere, even back when Tenzo first joined the Black Ops, and the lulls in the missions were long, and he was curious. But a then-fifteen year-old Yugao intervened, proclaimed Hatake-taicho a terrible influence, and dragged Tenzo by the ear to get a library card.

He was a third into the book, lounging comfortably on his beat up couch, when Kakashi came home, dusty and displeased with whatever C-rank they made him run, but earlier than expected.

Tenzo rose his hand in greeting, and continued flipping through the pages, half listening to Hatake whine about the mission desk, go through the cupboards and unpack the mission gear, and hummed in accord at places which he hoped were relevant.

But story was picking up its pace, and Tenzo unexpectedly found himself more and more involved in it, so that he didn't notice Kakashi standing over him, vest and hitai-ate off, but still in his road-worn uniform.

“It’s one of the most compelling ones,” Hatake did not appear to be bothered by the neglect, dragging out syllables with his usual  lingering detachment. “I really enjoy how her decision between is brought out in the first half of the book, and then she weighs on the consequences.”

Tenzo glared at him from above the green binding.

“Oh, you’re not there yet.” Kakashi smiled, shrugging awkwardly, and fell on the couch next to him. “But don't worry, this means that you will get to appreciate the buildup more.”

Tenzo snorted, and moved a bit to make him more comfortable. And reached out, to throw the white strands out of Hatake’s face, let his fingertips gently run over the scalp, and the weight of his hand - to rest at the nape of the neck.

And Kakashi leaned into the touch, and followed it, accepting the affection offered without reservation, but with a smile of his closed eyes, and quiet, lived-in trust that pulled on something warm and sweet and racing inside Tenzo’s chest.

It was another one of their quiet things, a _hello_ , and _I’m glad you’re alright_ , and _of course I am_ and _I came back to you_.

They sat in silence for a while, allowing for the moment to settle between them, and Tenzo used the time to take in the face of the man in front of him. The lines of weariness, and the signs of peace, and the coy upturn of the mouth barely visible under the dark fabric of the mask.

He knew that Hatake knew that he was staring, by the curve of the lips that grew wider, by the all-too-even breathing, which didn’t change when his thumb brushed over the sharp chin.

“Go change.” Tenzo nudged softly, and a single grey eye opened to look at him, knocking all of the air out of his lungs with simply how beautiful it was.

“Too tired to.” Kakashi mumbled, and reached over him, not for a kiss, but for one of the architecture books from the pile on the floor, and sunk deeper into the couch with it.

Tenzo did not have it in him question the sudden interest in facades of Earth’s Warring States era palaces, but promised himself that he’ll get up and shove Hatake into the shower as soon as he’s done with the chapter Kakashi interrupted him on.

But he was quickly lulled back into in it, with the turns of the plot, Kakashi’s warm presence heavy against him, and the faint scents of dust, steel, the road, and the enormous forests outside of Konoha which Hatake brought back with him.

He didn’t single out the hand resting on his thigh, until it started to climb further up, tracing warm, inviting circles through the fabric of his pants.

“I really want to finish this.” Tenzo said, trying not to get distracted.

“Yeah?” Kakashi looked at him over the shoulder, seemingly bored. “What's so important about it.”

“Things,” he tried to conceal himself, and realized that he had made a terrible mistake, when a flash of attention sparked in Hatake’s eye. He was on a hook, and would not be let go of.

Kakashi somehow always managed to get him cornered without exercising a bit of his actual power. It was just a quick movement, and then the hands on his shoulders and the weight on his lap, and the threads of his attention were firmly in Hatake’s hold.

“What kind of things?” The single eye was locked on his, and the voice was close, and familiar, and soft, and teasing.

“Important ones.” Tenzo tried to dodge the question, but could not protest when the book was carefully taken out of his hands and thrown on the floor.

And Kakashi just looked at him, with a knowing fondnesses, waiting for his resolve to break, and tracing the cracks of it as his fingers ran over other’s shoulders. And the smile was growing wider as the blush on Tenzo’s cheeks was gaining a darker shade.

And here Tenzo had to cut the game of anticipation, to pull down the mask to get a full look at it.

He did so slowly, rolling down the thick fabric inch after inch, to admire the newly earned tan line, a thin nose, and the sharp angles of cheekbones, and to finally catch the corners of that smile with his fingertips.

Kakashi started kissing him, lazy and opened mouthed, his hand cupping Tenzo’s jaw with both gentleness and demand.

And it was their home, and their couch. And every gaze, and brush of lips, and tongue carefully slipping into his mouth was so deeply familiar, and yet felt only stronger from it, that whatever strain of thought Tenzo had, he lost it. And then another, definitively insane one, appeared instead.

So much of what they had was built on recognizing each other’s silences, allowing familiarity and habit to fill the gap they were both too afraid to cross. But now he might as well jump into it.  
  
He kissed Kakashi, and then pressed his lips to the closed lid of the sharingan.  
  
Hatake’s breath broke, and then the crimson eye in the scarred socket opened, and now two mismatched eyes were looking straight at him.

“What.” Tenzo let out a short laugh, admiring the trembling black tomoe inside a radiant, crimson iris. He rarely got to see the sharingan that close and not be in some sort of mortal danger. It was electrifying.

“What are you doing?” Kakashi’s eyes were darting over his face, confused, trying to get a read on him. Now Hatake felt like the one cornered, by the straightforwardness and the rawness of what was about to happen between them, and Tenzo’s utter inability to cut corners in relation to all of it.

“You started it.” Tenzo noted, gentle, and cupped Kakashi’s face, to look him straight in the eye, and felt the other move uncertainty against him.

“Is this not what you wanted.” Tenzo asked, concern palpable and real, splashing in his eyes.

“What.” Kakashi breathed, carefully capturing his lips.

He was falling back in, into that deep trust that melted every bone in Tenzo’s body, and made him question if he did enough to deserve such a thing. He was going to say something very stupid. And Kakashi wanted him to. Tenzo could tell by how he leaned into the touch, by how much he encouraged every gaze and word.

“This.” He asked, one last time, to be sure that they were both on the same page.

“This.” Hatake agreed.

They had to talk about this. He kissed Kakashi again to be sure. To give them both courage.

“So I was reading..”  
  
“Yeah.” Kakashi kissed him again, deeper, careful but so so impatient, with the teeth teasing the line of the lower lip.

“Don’t interrupt me.” Tenzo fussed, worried that the whole thing would go sideways before he had a chance to get to the important part.

And Kakashi laughed.

“So, about that moment, when she figures out that she likes Daisuke, and then, in the park…”

Tenzo paused, uncertain, waiting for a quib or a response. But  Hatake just listened, with the crimson orb of the sharingan contracting and expanding, picking up every detail, chakra burning it deep inside his mind, which made him unable to forget.

Tenzo swallowed.  
  
“She tells him that she loves him.”

Nothing in Kakashi changed, except for the softness which crept into his voice, and the sadness which Tenzo could not wish away or explain.

“It might be good that you’re not there in the book yet.”  
  
“I don’t want this to be about the book.” He said, firmly.

“I know.”

“And are you okay with that?”

And here, Kakashi did not hesitate.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

+

It was better now, with the words out. And Tenzo was still realizing the terrible force of what had settled within him.

It was the smile, and the surprisingly mercurial expressions, which he learned all shades of from under the mask. And all of the very particular tea-brewing habits. And the hand resting over his chest at night.

For all of that, Tenzo would alone face the Five Kage.

Now he had the permission to love, and it was spilling out of him, a torrent of smallest things and greatest devotion. And he didn't realize how starved for it Kakashi was, and how willingly, with how much rage and how much care he both took and gave back.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, they allowed themselves to be happy.

Because now they were replanting the fiddle leaf fig.

It had not only grown to big for its original corner, but also for its pot, and they were moving it into a bigger one.

Tenzo was showing Kakashi how to take the plant out without damaging the roots, and how to carefully place the drainage, and exactly how much soil was needed to make it comfortable. He wasn’t sure if the plants liked Hatake that much, or if he learned to listen to them properly. But Kakashi was definitely trying. And Tenzo believed in progress.

Hatake was presciously concentrated, sitting cross-legged on the floor and carefully firming out the soil around the fig in its new pot. It was so rare when Kakashi ran into something he wasn't good at, but then he put all of the dedication and stubborn precision into getting the job right.

And Tenzo loved him like this.

“What are you doing?” Kakashi huffed the hair out of his face, and carefully shook his hands off over the newspaper on the floor.

“Looking at you.” Tenzo smiled. He sitting on the same floor, and kicked back against the couch when he felt confident that leaving Hatake one-on-one with a plant would not result in a death of him or the fig.

“You’ve had, what, eight years to look at me, Tenzo.” Kakashi gave him a no-nonsense glare. “Now hand me the drainage.”

“But it's like, I can _see_ you, when we are no longer in the field together every other day.” Tenzo picked up the bag, and gently tossed in towards him.

Kakashi cocked his head at him, and the drenage was left forgotten.

“Are you saying that if we worked together you wouldn't..?”

Hatake stumbled over the last two words, which were still difficult for him, and what Tenzo cherished was that he made no secret of that, and permitted himself the vulnerability of it around him. And Tenzo considered that, and how far away all of it was to what Kakashi was to him in the ANBU.

“I wouldn't know that I could.”

“I’m glad that I left then.” Hatake gave a huff, and went back to work on the plant.

And Tenzo watched him carefully place small stones on the top of fig’s dark soil.

“Me too.”  
  
+  
  
“Yamato is stupid.”  
  
“But I like Yamato.”  
  
“You also like your tomatoes raw. You shouldn't have a say in this.”  
  
“It's just,” Yamato shrugged. “The old name doesn't fit anymore, you know?”  
  
“But Tenzo.” Kakashi winced at him, dragging out the last syllable.

Yamato rolled his eyes.

Hatake did not want to let that name go. And Yamato felt like he had the right not to, since it was he who gave it to him on the first place. Perhaps he could gift it back to Kakashi to use, as a keepsake of sorts. He hadn't decided yet.

They were getting ramen together.

And all was as usual. Kakashi would flirt with the counter girl, and Yamato would pay, and Konoha would continue on its way behind the back, blind to who they were and what they talked about in the hum of the late afternoon.

A pack of kids raced down the street.

“The Academy graduation is in a few weeks.” Yamato noted, watching them over his shoulder.

Kakashi stared into his half-empty bowl of ramen, and Yamato received no response. So he gently kicked him under the counter.

“Could be the year, senpai.”

“Don’t call me that.” Kakashi made an effort to avoid the conversation, switching to a more familiar and more comfortable argument. And Yamato allowed that to go.

“Don’t call me Tenzo.” He objected, flatly, and could see Hatake smile under the mask.

It had been two years since Kakashi had left the ANBU.

Things have changed, in a slow and powerful way in which rivers alter their course but remain same. And Yamato had to sometimes look back to appreciate how much was different, and how much - fundamentally the same.

Kakashi was calmer. The restlessness which would haunt him in the ANBU had waned, as if he was no longer trapped in a soundless wrestle with his own mind. Yamato still read it in him,  within the sharp edges and the long pauses, but he wasn't sure if he couldn't stop seeing the darkness in Kakashi to the same degree that Hatake couldn't stop carrying it within himself. This was also who they were.

Yamato wasn’t sure about himself. But for one, he did decide to pick a new name. He felt calmer, stronger than he were two years ago, and more full of light and less alone. He saw a future, which was not only masks and codenames and wordless works in the shadows, but other people and what he could share with them.

Now he found himself sandwiched between Anko and Kurenai during barbecue outings, rocking the conversation backwards and forwards over warm sake, while Kakashi and Gai would be laughing over something of their own at the corner of the table. And Hatake would occasionally spend an evening with Team Ro, where he was always a welcome guest and teller of audacious stories.

This wasn't a clean slate, or even a new beginning they probably deserved - but would not have taken. They both learned to see, themselves and each other, and were strong enough to act on that, and to break the patterns of who they were before.But the knowledge of it remained, and somewhere in the back of Yamato’s mind he was still Hound’s second. It is better when some things change, and that there are ones which remain the same. Ichiraku’s was still the place where they went.

This wasn't the end, but a middle. A part of a story he did not expect himself to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and then they get ninja-married and get their ninja kids *dabs* (not without some major bumps on the road, but what was ever easy) 
> 
> and wow, we're done here. everyone who made it this far with the story - thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> I did enjoy writing this tremendously, and it's an equal pleasure to share this with y'all. 
> 
> So please consider leaving a comment - I thrive on feedback! You can also find me on tumblr @rex-sidereus.


End file.
